Tuesday evening teaching yoga in Milan : voice assists

Last week on tuesday I taught in english italian a full vinyasa class in Milan. It was a great experience. But I asked to my colleghes do you think it is right to change language during a yoga teaching? In a nutshell, many of them told me not to answer because they never had to. A few of them told me not to feel like teaching in another language. My friend and colleghe Belinda said to me it is right to be understood by students.

My personal feeling is not to touch too much students (verbal guidance) so if I need to express in a few seconds to change a foot position to improve the posture, I need to say it as quick as possible. And possible means if I communicate a first assist and the student does not understand, I will change my teaching language for him or her at the next one. The best book I red about assisting is Yoga assists of Sharon Gannon. In this book it is suggested to teachers to know how to adjust but to decide if to do it or not. I guess thatmis the point. Freedom of speech, to get a result. Action on the contrary.

First IoDonna yoga tour in italy with Sharon Gannon and Benedetta Spada

I am happy to share with you the details about the first italian Yoga Tour in historical venues to promote yoga practice for people inviting them in incredible location to pratice for the first time or so. I would say to enlarge the circle and make it a beautiful experience, to create inspiration, to be joyful all together once, to change mind-body, to love yourself and choose life. More details and registration on line.

Yoga tour Fai location:
http://www.iodonna.it/speciali/theYogaTour/location.shtml

altri link utili:

http://www.rcsmediagroup.it/comunicati/al-via-il-26-settembre-il-primo-the-yoga-tour-uniniziativa-di-io-donna-e-fai-in-collaborazione-con-bionike/?refresh_ce-cp

http://www.primaonline.it/2015/09/24/214520/al-via-il-26-settembre-il-primo-the-yoga-tour-uniniziativa-di-io-donna-e-fai-in-collaborazione-con-bionike/

http://www.iodonna.it/attualita/appuntamenti-ed-eventi/2015/09/25/yoga-10-pillole-di-saggezza/

http://www.iodonna.it/benessere/salute-prevenzione/2015/09/28/yoga-tour-prima-tappa-al-castello-della-manta/

Yoga Teachers:
Sharon Gannon
Benedetta Spada Vincent
Paola Buonuomo‬

             

Yoga challenge creating a new practice with mindfulness for 366 days

Mindful Yoga lab is a research project about practicing mindfulness while being on a yoga mat. born to be an answer to the difficulties of some people to use mind while doing body exercises of yoga, it aims at producing a mindful guidance of any body movements and of asana stay and exit. We decided to create a yoga challenge as Bernie Siegel book 101 exercizes for soul has inspired to us. Every week for one year, We will publish an article about an exercize of mind into a yoga practice. Usyually Yoga labs last 60' and are in a Vinyasa style. Please feel free to comment and like. A crowdfunding for the Book publishing is ON at https://www.paypal.me/benedettaspada

Introduction
Mind is a part of our wholeness which can be helpful to work on our self silently, with willpower, creating a new wellbeing culture. The only instrument you need to use are concentration for a while and smile. It can be easier that working on body or spirit. As a interior way of being it works from inside to ouside also on the body, creating a dialogue. If mind was a muscle, it is easy to think it could be stronger of flexible with a specific workout. To create a healthy mind, it is necessary to listen to the mind after stimolating it, without painting the answer with our fear or anger or others' convictions. We need faith in the divine project for us, and be the change for a true increased real life. Being stronger mindbody do not leave a chance to illness, bad news or distructive behaviour.

LAB #1
Pain is necessary is the starting point in mind to Look Back Lab and go to opposite of numbness. Practicing yoga you may feel your limit, in the present moment and from the past. Anytime you remember or live or even anticipate a bad karma, keep an open mind and peacefully watch what occurs. You may associate something good which happen at the same time, write it down, keep it in your mind. Thich Nhat Hanh would say make your worst memories the new plants and opportunities that grew out of the ashes and best compost of your life. Yoga is an opportunity to make a talk between soul and body, following the outside pain to go back to inside and finally release.

#2
In front of your fear Will Power is necessary in yoga, as breating to live. We need a voluntary breathe for the Freedom From Fear Lab. What is it? There is a natural individual breathe and a voluntary collective breathe. If you are calm your breathe is calm and steady, if not you can eventually hick up. If yoga corresponds to women, locks and breathes correspond better to the maschile part of us which should make it easier for men. In fact it corresponds to the right part of the brain so every sane body should make it. Usually natural breathe is an expression of our reaction, voluntary breathe is an struggle for freedom. Lets have an exemple, if I dream during the night it is a reaction in act, if I do a visualization during the day it is a act of willpower. Breathing as a wilful act which envolve body, mind and spirit. Unwilled breathe is an expression of our unbalance life. Putting in front of us our fear, helps in finding our own yoga posture, breathe, and holiness.

Lab #3 is a transitory exercize to settle down our soul evolution. The focus of the laboratory is a high value of yoga: integrity. To be true with ourself is different than to be honest. Let me tell you this event I assisted, a man in a park drop a 50-euro bill and as several others I saw it and decided to return it to the man, that was honesty. But if no one else saw that the man had dropped the money and I decide to return it, that is integrity. Integrity is internal honesty, or as Anita Moorjani said is being centrered within the universe, it is god speaking through me. Patanjali has writen a Sutra about: you can not say anything that does not come true. In your asana practice that choice of truthfulness means to star at your mat, and not compare with others, to do the postures as far as you can, may be some more and then come back to your maximum of the day. Then release tensions, speak about emotions and let go. The contrary would be to be distracted, to cheat about your effective limit, to go out of a posture without a benefit, to repress emotions.

Jivamukti yoga with Sharon Gannon Italian tour 2015 Milano Roma Cervia

Sharon Gannon is back in Italy next November 2015, (2015 events are here)
for the presentation of her last translated cook book in italian Recipes of Joy. Read more here http://www.simplerecipesforjoy.com/sharon-gannon/

I am so happy to introduce to italian yogini in case they dont know her. I met Sharon in 2008 in London for Yoga Journal italia to interview her and David Life and partecipate to my best yoga workshop ever. Our meeting led to the organization of the first event in Milan in 2009 with 100+ yoga fans from Italy, southern and central Europe. Great success before another success in Rome with the Jivamukti school of Nieves. Here more info about Nieves http://www.nivesyoga.it

Then in 2010 I went in Berlin for the only european workshop with others hundreds of yogini. I cant remember to have practiced with such a number of people, and will always remember that Sharonji say hello to anybody before the practice together. A way to say hello, to say thanks that I learnt from her. Our last meeting was in 2011 for the last presentation of Book in Italy and workshop with Yoga Festival and Eifis (we actually have the same publisher). Great moment of yoga and yoga life.
Now she is coming back so please after reading reserve HERE!
Milan, Rome and Cervia (Venice).


If you read italian I have an article for you writen by Maria Laura Giovagnini, a chief editor in IoDonna with whom I have collaborated as testimonial of Yoga tour 2015 and once practiced yoga.
Here about Yoga tour 2015 with Sharon Gannon
Here about Article about Sharon Gannon 2012


And have a great time.
With great love all is possible.

Yoga and tenderness: the gentle side of yoga

Next event in Antibes on August the 2nd 2015
9:30 am - 12
Euro. 35

Yoga and tenderness

The yoga work (atelier) is focused on finding tenderness (douceur) while practicing dynamic yoga. After practicing with mindfulness, after practicing with breathe awareness, I will present in anteprima her next workshop for Yoga festival Italia "Practicing with tenderness". The daily tenderness teaching (please check www.casadellatenerezza.org for more information) is included into a vinyasa yoga sequence which empower the body and strenghten the mind. The guided meditation will broaden the horinzons to the advanced or beginners. Multilevel and french/english spoken.

Some more details later.

Yoga, love and miracle for a good health

Yoga can heal? After 15 years of yoga teaching to thousands of persons and following them face to face and with social networks, I wanted to give an answer to this question. My answer comes from somewhere into my mind but not from brain, it is a vertical thinking, nothing to explain, nothing to plan. Half of who is reading now could prefer bill Tara' horizontal words (see below), for the others, the vertical thinking is a feeling, the truth you get in a look, the very first thinking before thinking (which has happened in a before space). What happen before thinking? A simple exercize to understand: breathing check up.

Mukund Bhole (www.yogabhole.com) has set a vertical system from an indian medical 50 years' experience. I would sum it up in "feel instead of think" your yoga practice. Slow your breathe, feel your inspire, extend and relax, then expire.

Use your hands like ears, to feel, experience, perceive the peel contact. Check up your bandhas specially uddiyana bandha on the inspire relax your pelvic area like a lotus flower opening, and on the expire stress a little your pelvic area (scrotum for men). Check up your  breathe IN relax and extend, EX stress and contract. Mindfulness is coming back to correct breathe (possibly ujjayi), to your focus (mindfulness and drishti), to right movement (as far as you know them banda and asana). Use compassion it does not matter if you loose the rythm as a student of viola please come back to the starting point for a new play.

The words from the students I listened to at the end of the check up were close to my intent, almost intuitive or not rational. It is so different from what this society used to ask for that I consider a success the affirmation of the rightness to use sound during the asana practice, the right observation that there is nothing to understand but only to feel, and the curiosity around mindfulness as I made it works. In a few words of mine mindfulness applicated to yoga (meditation in movement) is: find your first thinkings, find them right, give them importance.

Before the yoga sequence practice, I guided a moment of mindfulness in order to choose a focus for anybody. The focus helps, as the breathe while someone loose the sense of this work to come back to a starting point. The lost of concentration is not important but the find again of mindfulness practice is mindfulness. Sometimes I say to my students who are disturbed by the external sound of a car in the street or a plane over the city, "if you get disturbed and have many thoughts please put them on the next car/plane which is passing now and let them go. Come back to your breathe. Come back to your focus."

During the asana practice, we are getting slowly in. Building a vinyasa, and mindfuling an asana. For exemple, while practicing crocodile pose, I ask for laying down on the mat, feeling the breathe into the belly, and upward body. Reconnecting to the mindful practice of bandhas. The vinyasa therapy sequence is mostly based on feet standing postures. Getting faster the practice is combined with bija mantra (small primordial sounds).
See min. 4:15 the Shiva rea video click here
Or copy and paste later http://youtu.be/6x1kt6A0o9s

After the one hour dynamic practice, I suggest the candel or the bridge posture but done in a slow motion version, specially while getting out of the posture. 

During the relaxation I create positive thinking based on a book or on some reactions at what I have caught from the collective practice. In case I taught to ashtangi, I insist on the necessity to balance the strenght with flexibility (mentally and physically) for exemple. The sense to have practice in slow motion at the begining and at the end. The technics to find when you loose them bandhas, ujjayi and focus. A book I used in the past is Natural mind, natural body of Bill Tara, specially the parts called Wellness tips and The authentic Self. Create manageable goals, make your goals actable and act them. "Goals without actions are wishes. Action without a plan is often chaos and feeds the monkeys. If we do not make plans and commitments to ourselves, our failures can easily disempower us. If we let our vision fuel our desire, we need to let our plans be the engine that moves us forward." (bill Tara).

In a nutshell, yoga is life and lifestyle. To be alive while practicing you need to improve your presence and to be a real person (as you practice yoga) you need to put into practice your self.

Good food for mindfulness in Antibes for summer events 2015

The book of Mahiya Zoé Matthews includes the words I was looking for. After a year, working with macrobiotic cooks, authors and speakers, I was seriously thinking about the what is there after macrobiotics?! I got the best from Ohsawa, and its followers, some new generation authors I was daily using the books, but something was missing to me in order to explain how to eat. So I red further more! And Philippe Sionneau with tao explaination about how to cook were enlightening. Then I decided to meet one of this master called Carlo Guglielmo, nearby Torino wgere he found a macrobiotic food company and helped hundreds of people with TCM. Since then, I applicate in my alimentation the 5 transformations cycle and pray before eating. The what was clear to me, and I finally found the How to eat in this Ananda's work. The title of the book was clear : soul full eating. Eating was an action to change the world and my individual and the soul was the motor. The full use of my soul was the condition to make eating a prayer, a mantra or a meditation. Sometimes in my life I met people successing in make a great plate for my soul, silently and personally felt good, but these happy few were in trouble to explain me how to proceed. In a nutshell, the best part of the book is while including prayer, meditation, friendship, mindfulness, engagement. Eating, cooking are the same doing as they say. While Eating/Fasting and Digesting, our inner strenght and character determine our ability to be a peaceful person at home and in the world. Like a training focused on yama practice. I recently called this practice with Mindfulness words instead of yoga words. I include into my evening vinyasa therapy yoga classes, 30 minutes of mindful practice to prepare to diner. With my husband we have done some meetings (called M-eatings) called "Good Nutrition, Good emotions and mindful life can change our life!" because 

Tenderness is: preparing ourself to eat good (holy and yummy)

Don Carlo Rochetta, from a conference in Perugia.

Events organized with a spirit of dediction to create a knowledge and counsciousness about food.
August 7th 2015
Next event in Arts Thés Miss in Antibes, for a vegan diner plus an experience of mindfulness. More info below

https://www.facebook.com/events/439195036283755/